House for All Sinners and Saints’ 40 ideas for keeping a holy Lent www.houseforall.org Day 1: Pray for your enemies Day 2: Walk, carpool, bike or bus it. Day 3: Don’t turn on the car radio Day 4: Give $20 to a non-profit of your choosing (Sunday) Day 5: Take 5 minutes of silence at noon Day 6: Look out the window until you find something of beauty you had not noticed before Day 7: Give 5 items of clothing... Read more

  In the rest of our lives it seems that we are consumed by the hopeless project of ensuring our own immortality.  As though we can live forever or fend off the insult of aging with the right combination of exercise, diet, self-care and if we can afford it, elective surgery.  Face creams, hair die, yoga.  The offers of false promise are all around us.  Luring us into the delusion of endless youth as though we can buy our way... Read more

I was asked by the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado to testify in front of the senate judiciary committee on the issue of civil unions for GLBTQ couples.  Here it is. Thank you Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Pastor Nadia Bolz-weber.  I am ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and serve a congregation here in Denver called House for All Sinners and Saints. I’d like to start by saying that people of good faith dis-agree... Read more

Yesterday afternoon I received an email from a friend of a friend who said that my name and church are being tossed around by some LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod – they don’t ordain women) types (again) as an example of all the horrible things that go wrong when women become pastors. Apparently  there are some who are just appalled by the chocolate fountain in the baptismal font picture on my church’s website. The writer of the email was kind.  She... Read more

  Click on link below to hear audio: Sermon on Jesus’ Dream Team: rank fishermen, demoniacs and sick old ladies Mark 1:29-34a 29As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. 32That... Read more

If you are a Christian who takes offense at swear words or believes for some reason that clergy should never be cranky or irritated, then I am not the person for you to follow.  It’s ok.  You don’t actually need me. The entire publishing arm of the Christian Industrial Complex (I believe my friend Shane Claiborne coined that term) has a great deal of material that is just for you! Countless Christian websites and books and blogs are your brand... Read more

House for all Sinners and Saints, the congregation I serve in Denver, Colorado, started with 8 people in my living room in the Fall of 2007. (I hereby proclaim the living room of a church planter to be the iconic equivalent to the garage of a tech start-up’s founder) Someone asked me early on what’s your 5 year plan? Um, yeah…never had a plan.  Well I kind of have a plan:  I plan on being a responsive and adaptive leader and... Read more

I recently realized that someday I too will be a baby boomer. It’s not that the year of my birth will mysteriously jump to 1959 but that culturally I will become (or realistically I have already become) that which I criticize. Complaining about Baby Boomers is a part time job for Gen Xers in church leadership.  I sometimes say that mine is the Prince Charles generation…Boomers are never going to retire and the crown will pass right to Gen Y.... Read more

This week one of my parishioners, Asher O’Callaghan wrote a post for the Fund for Theological Education about his experience as a transgender man at House for All Sinners and Saints.  You can read his lovely reflection here. After posting this link on Facebook and Twitter this morning  several people have asked to see what rite we used.  I had posted this on my previous blog last September, but here it is now on this new site: ____________________________________________________________ Here is... Read more